EEG markers from opensesame

DionH

Hi Everyone,

I've been trying to get opensesame working with our EEG system (Brain products) using the parallel_port_trigger plugin described here: https://osdoc.cogsci.nl/3.1/manual/devices/parallel/

I think I've managed to enter the correct port address, and don't get any errors, however nothing comes up on the EEG recorder (I do see markers if I use an old eprime study so the hardward seems to be fine). It's hard to know what the issue is given that there are no errors so I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about where the problem might be. I've tried a few different versions of OpenSesame as well as the plugin, all running on windows 7 (64bit). I read originally that the plugin doesn't require all of the additional steps listed under "getting access to the parallel port", but might it be necessary for me to run the Digital Signature Enforcement Overrider and install the 64bit DLPortIO driver anyway?

Thanks for any help,

Dion

sebastiaan

Hi @DionH ,

There are two things that come to mind:

• The port is specified incorrectly so that the triggers go nowhere. Are you familiar with the hexadecimal notation that is often used to specify port numbers?
• The duration is set to a very low number, such that the trigger is already reset back to 0 before the acquisition device has time to register it.

Could it be either of these things?

— Sebastiaan

DionH

Hi @sebastiaan

Thanks for your reply! I did have some trouble with the port address at first as I'm not too familiar with the hexadecimal notation. When I look at the port address in the device settings in windows, it says D030, and when we send triggers from E-Prime this means we send to &HD030 which is still working. In opensesame that produced an error saying that the port address could not be found, but this error went away when I use 0x030 as the address. Since the error stopped I just assumed that it was now successfully finding the port, maybe that's not true? (NB: I just noticed that I was using an older version of the plugin, 5.0, and the error actually returns when I'm using the latest version of the plugin 6.0 with 0x030 as the port, so maybe the address has been wrong the whole time but version 5.0 didn't throw out an error for whatever reason).

I just tried playing around with the duration after seeing your post (while running version 5.0 of the plugin) going up to 100ms and it didn't seem to have any effect.

On a (probably) separate note, after noticing the version issue I updated to the latest version of OpenSesame and the latest version of the plugin and in that case I get an error when I even attempt to insert either of the parallel port trigger objects into my experiment. I sent the error message in OpenSesame so hopefully you received that. This is probably a completely different issue but I thought it might be useful to note.

Thanks again,

Dion

sebastiaan

Hi @Dion ,

When I look at the port address in the device settings in windows, it says D030, and when we send triggers from E-Prime this means we send to &HD030 which is still working. In opensesame that produced an error saying that the port address could not be found, but this error went away when I use 0x030 as the address. 

That's it then. The D is part of the number (it's the hexadecimal 13), so you want to specify 0xD030 as the port number.

I sent the error message in OpenSesame so hopefully you received that. This is probably a completely different issue but I thought it might be useful to note.

I guess the plugin needs to be updated for the new version of OpenSesame. I'm not the developer of that plugin, but I'll see if I can file an issue for it.

Cheers!

Sebastiaan

DionH

Hi @sebastiaan

Thanks very much for the clarification.

I've reverted back to testing it out using version 3.1.9 of opensesame based on the idea that 3.1 was the major version in development when the plugin was last updated to 6.0. But using 3.1.9 with the 6.0 version of the plugin, and 0xD030 as the port address is continuing to give me an error saying that the port can't be found. I can probably attach a screenshot of the full error tab in opensesame if that's informative?

Best,

Dion

sebastiaan

Hi @DionH ,

I don't what it could be, to be honest, aside from the two suggestions above. Maybe @Bob could chip in (the developer of the plugin)? Although I'm not sure he's still active on the forum, so you could also try posting something on the issue tracker for the plugin.

— Sebastiaan